fuel

Preliminary investigation does not apportion blame for Boeing 787 crash that killed 260 people in June.

Fuel control switches to the engines of an Air India flight that crashed shortly after takeoff last month were moved from the “run” to the “cutoff” position moments before impact, according to a preliminary report.

The report, issued by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) early on Saturday, did not offer any conclusions or apportion blame for the June 12 disaster that killed 260 people in the plane and on the ground, but said the shift occurred three seconds after takeoff.

After the switches flipped, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner immediately began to lose thrust and sink down, according to the report.

One pilot can be heard on the cockpit voice recorder asking the other why he cut off the fuel. “The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” the report said.

It did not identify which remarks were made by the flight’s captain and which by the first officer, nor which pilot transmitted “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” just before the crash.

The preliminary report also does not say how the switch could have flipped to the cutoff position on the London-bound flight from the Indian city of Ahmedabad.

United States aviation safety expert John Cox said a pilot would not be able to accidentally move the fuel switches that feed the engines.

“You can’t bump them and they move,” he told the Reuters news agency.

Flipping to cutoff almost immediately cuts the engines. It is most often used to turn engines off once a plane has arrived at its airport gate and in certain emergency situations, such as an engine fire. The report does not indicate there was any emergency requiring an engine cutoff.

“At this stage of investigation, there are no recommended actions to Boeing 787-8 and/or GE GEnx-1B engine operators and manufacturers,” India’s AAIB said.

There were 242 people on board the plane, including passengers and crew. Only one, Viswashkumar Ramesh, survived.

The plane crashed in a residential area called Meghani Nagar, and 19 people on the ground were also killed.

The AAIB, an office under India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation, is leading the probe into the world’s deadliest aviation accident in a decade.

July 11 (UPI) — Ford Motor Co. has recalled 850,000 trucks, SUVs and cars, including the popular F-150 pickup and the S550 Mustang, due to issues with the vehicles’ fuel pumps, the company announced.

The recall covers models produced between 2021 and 2023 and includes truck models all the way up to the F-550 and various sport utility vehicles, such as the Bronco, Explorer, Lincoln Aviator, Expedition and Navigator produced for the U.S. market.

The vehicles covered in the recall all have Phinia-supplied fuel pumps that could fail unexpectedly, which can cause the vehicle to stall while in operation and increase the risk for a crash, the company said.

Ford began investigating the fuel pump issue in the fall of 2022 after an unusual number of warranty claims and customer complaints.

The investigation determined that the fuel pump openings were becoming clogged and not providing enough fuel to the engine.

The fuel pumps in question were installed in vehicles between July 2021 and December 2022. The company has said it is working on a replacement part, adding that owners and lessees would be notified of the recall by July 18.

Ford has said it is not aware of any accidents or injuries associated with the faulty fuel pumps.

The UN says that despite being permitted to deliver the first fuel shipment to Gaza in 130 days, it was not enough to cover even a single day’s needs, leaving hospitals and other critical facilities on the brink of shutdown.

Two of Gaza’s largest hospitals have issued desperate pleas for help, warning that fuel shortages caused by Israel’s siege could soon turn the medical centres into “silent graveyards”.

The warnings from al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza City and Nasser Hospital in southern Khan Younis came on Wednesday, as Israeli forces continued to bombard the Palestinian enclave, killing at least 74 people.

Muhammad Abu Salmiyah, the director of al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest facility, told reporters that the lives of more than 100 premature babies and some 350 dialysis patients were at risk.

“Oxygen stations will stop working. A hospital without oxygen is no longer a hospital. The lab and blood banks will shut down, and the blood units in the refrigerators will spoil,” Salmiyah said.

“The hospital will cease to be a place of healing and will become a graveyard for those inside,” he said.

Abu Salmiyah went on to accuse Israel of “trickle-feeding” fuel to Gaza’s hospitals, and said that al-Shifa’s dialysis department had already been shut down to conserve power for the intensive care unit and operating rooms, which cannot be without electricity for even a few minutes.

‘Final hours’

In Khan Younis, the Nasser Medical Complex said it, too, has entered “the crucial and final hours” due to the fuel shortages.

“With the fuel counter nearing zero, doctors have entered the battle to save lives in a race against time, death, and darkness,” the hospital said in a statement. “Medical teams fight to the last breath. They have only their conscience and hope in those who hear the call – save Nasser Medical Complex before it turns into a silent graveyard for patients who could have been saved.”

Mohammed Sakr, a spokesman for the hospital, told the Reuters news agency that the facility needs 4,500 litres (1,189 gallons) of fuel per day to function, but it now has only 3,000 litres (790 gallons) – enough to last 24 hours.

Sakr said doctors are performing surgeries without electricity or air conditioning, and the sweat from staff is dripping into patients’ wounds, risking infection.

A video from Nasser Hospital, posted on social media, shows doctors sweating profusely as they perform a surgery.

“Everything is turned off here. The air conditioning is turned off. No fans,” a doctor says in the video as he demonstrates conditions in the ward. “All the staff are exhausted, they are complaining [about the] high temperature.”

Israel’s relentless bombardment has decimated Gaza’s healthcare system in the 21 months since it launched its assault on the Palestinian enclave in the wake of the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023.

Since then, there have been more than 600 recorded attacks on health facilities in Gaza, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). As of May this year, only 19 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain partially operational, with 94 percent of all hospitals damaged or destroyed.

Israeli forces have also killed more than 1,500 health workers in Gaza, and detained 185, according to official figures.

The WHO, meanwhile, has described Gaza’s health sector as being “on its knees”, with shortages of fuel, medical supplies and frequent arrivals of mass casualties from Israeli attacks.

Suffocating siege

Marwan al-Hams, the director of field hospitals in Gaza, told Al Jazeera that “hundreds” of people could die in the territory if fuel supplies are not brought in urgently.

This includes “dozens” of premature babies who could die within the next two days, he said. Dialysis and intensive care patients would also lose their lives, he said, adding that the injuries of the wounded were worsening amid deteriorating conditions, while diseases like meningitis were spreading.

UNICEF spokesperson James Elder, who recently returned from Gaza, said, “You can have the best hospital staff on the planet”, but if they are denied medicine and fuel, operating a health facility “becomes an impossibility”.

Israel has imposed a suffocating siege on Gaza since early March.

Over the past weeks, it has allowed some food into Gaza to be distributed through a United States-backed group at sites where hundreds of aid seekers have been shot dead by Israeli soldiers.

But fuel has not entered the territory in more than four months.

“What little fuel remains is already being used to power the most essential operations – such as intensive care units and water desalination – but those supplies are running out fast, and there are virtually no additional accessible stocks left,” the UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA) said on Tuesday.

“Hospitals are rationing. Ambulances are stalling. Water systems are on the brink. The deaths this is likely causing could soon increase sharply unless the Israeli authorities allow new fuel in – urgently, regularly and in sufficient quantities.”

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 57,575 people and wounded 136,879, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023 attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive.

‘Hospitals are rationing. Ambulances are stalling. Water systems are on the brink,’ UN humanitarian office says.

The United Nations humanitarian office, OCHA, has warned that the fuel crisis in Gaza due to the Israeli blockade has reached a “critical point” and will cause further deaths and suffering in the besieged Palestinian territory.

OCHA said the fuel powering vital functions in Gaza, including water desalination stations and hospitals’ intensive care units, is running out quickly, with “virtually no additional accessible stocks left”.

“Hospitals are rationing. Ambulances are stalling. Water systems are on the brink,” the office said in a statement.

“The deaths this is likely causing could soon increase sharply unless the Israeli authorities allow new fuel in – urgently, regularly and in sufficient quantities.”

Israel has imposed a suffocating siege on Gaza since early March.

Over the past weeks, it has allowed some food into Gaza to be distributed through a United States-backed group at sites where hundreds of aid seekers have been shot dead by Israeli fire.

But fuel has not entered the territory in months.

Senior World Food Programme official Carl Skau also decried the lack of fuel in Gaza.

“The needs are greater than ever, and our capacity to respond has never been more constrained. Famine is spreading, and people are dying trying to find food,” Skau said in a social media post.

“Our teams in Gaza are doing their best to deliver aid and are often caught in the crossfire. We are suffering from shortages of fuel, spare parts and essential communications equipment.”

The director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, said that the situation at the medical centre is alarming due to the lack of fuel supplies.

“We don’t have enough fuel left until morning. If fuel is not available, generators cannot run, and hospitals find it difficult to provide care,” Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera.

“Blood banks, nurseries and oxygen stations are not operating because of a lack of fuel. Patients will be doomed to certain death if fuel is not provided to hospitals.”

The health sector in Gaza has already been pushed to the brink under Israeli bombardment and repeated displacement orders.

Aid workers and health experts have been reporting a rise in preventable diseases in the territory amid the dire humanitarian situation.

On Tuesday, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said the enclave is seeing an uptick in cases of meningitis, a potentially deadly disease, especially among children.

“The catastrophic conditions in shelters, the severe shortage of drinking water, the spread of sewage, and the accumulation of waste are driving the health situation to further deterioration,” the ministry said.

Meningitis, which causes inflammation around the brain and spinal cord, can be caused by a bacterial infection.

In addition to the humanitarian crisis, Israel is pressing on with its intense bombardment of the territory. Medical sources told Al Jazeera that Israeli attacks killed at least 95 Palestinians in Gaza on Tuesday.

Israeli attacks killed dozens of displaced people in and around tents in the al-Mawasi area near Khan Younis and in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp.

UN experts and rights groups have described Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza as a genocide.

Cambodia’s PM Hun Manet announced that the decision would take effect from midnight on Sunday.

Cambodia has announced it will stop all fuel imports from its neighbour Thailand as relations have plunged to their lowest ebb in more than a decade after a Cambodian soldier was killed last month in a disputed area of the border.

Prime Minister Hun Manet announced the decision on Sunday, posting on social media that it would take effect from midnight.

Manet said energy companies would be able to “import sufficiently from other sources to meet domestic fuel and gas demands” in the country.

Separately, on Sunday, Cambodia’s Foreign Ministry urged its citizens not to travel to Thailand unnecessarily. Concurrently, Thailand’s consular affairs department warned Thais in Cambodia to avoid “protest areas”.

The ongoing escalation between the two countries began last month after a brief exchange of gunfire in the disputed border area killed a Cambodian soldier.

For more than a century, Cambodia and Thailand have contested sovereignty at various un-demarcated points along their 817km (508-mile) land border, which was first mapped by France when it colonised Cambodia in 1907.

But following the soldier’s death, the two countries have taken several measures to secure their borders, with both announcing closures of border checkpoints and crossings.

Leaked phone call

The border dispute created wider political turmoil after a leaked phone call on Wednesday between Thailand’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and the former Cambodian leader, Hun Sen, who remains a powerful influence in his nation.

During the call, the Thai premier told Hun Sen that she was under domestic pressure and urged him not to listen to “the opposite side”, including a prominent Thai military commander at the border.

Soon after the leak, a major coalition partner, the Bhumjaithai Party, quit the ruling alliance, overshadowing Paetongtarn’s premiership.

But on Sunday, the Thai leader said all coalition partners have pledged support for her government, which she said would seek to maintain political stability to address threats to national security.

Following a meeting with her coalition partners, she said, “The country must move forward. Thailand must unite and push policies to solve problems for the people.”

A rally has, nevertheless, been called for June 28 to demand that Paetongtarn, the daughter of influential former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, resign.

The dispute centred on an exception granted to California on national vehicle emission standards, allowing it to set stricter rules than federal standards.

The United States Supreme Court has sided with fuel producers that had opposed California’s standards for vehicle emissions and electric cars under a federal air pollution law, agreeing that their legal challenge to the mandates should not have been dismissed.

The justices in a 7-2 ruling on Friday overturned a lower court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit by a Valero Energy subsidiary and fuel industry groups. The lower court had concluded that the plaintiffs lacked the required legal standing to challenge a 2022 US Environmental Protection Agency decision to let California set its own regulations.

“The government generally may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders,” conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority.

Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the decision.

The dispute centred on an exception granted to California during Democratic former President Joe Biden’s administration to national vehicle emission standards set by the agency under the landmark Clean Air Act anti-pollution law.

Though states and municipalities are generally preempted from enacting their own limits, Congress let the EPA waive the preemption rule to let California set certain regulations that are stricter than federal standards.

The EPA’s 2022 action reinstated a waiver for California to set its own tailpipe emissions limits and zero-emission vehicle mandate through 2025, reversing a 2019 decision made during Republican President Donald Trump’s first administration rescinding the waiver.

Valero’s Diamond Alternative Energy and related groups challenged the reinstatement of California’s waiver, arguing that the decision exceeded the EPA’s power under the Clean Air Act and inflicted harm on their bottom line by lowering demand for liquid fuels.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out the lawsuit in 2024, finding that the challengers lacked the necessary standing to bring their claims because there was no evidence that a ruling in their favour might affect the decisions of auto manufacturers in a way that would result in fewer electric and more combustion vehicles to be sold.

Sceptical court

California, the most populous US state, has received more than 100 waivers under the Clean Air Act.

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has taken a sceptical view towards broad authority for federal regulatory agencies and has restricted the powers of the EPA in some important rulings in recent years.

In 2024, the court blocked the EPA’s “Good Neighbor” rule aimed at reducing ozone emissions that may worsen air pollution in neighbouring states. In 2023, the court hobbled the EPA’s power to protect wetlands and fight water pollution. In 2022, it imposed limits on the agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act to reduce coal and gas-fired power plant carbon emissions.

On December 15, 2024, a powerful storm swept through the Black Sea. Two Russian oil tankers were wrecked in the Kerch Strait, spilling vast quantities of fuel oil into the surrounding waters. Within days, the thick black substance reached the shores of Russia’s Krasnodar region, annexed Crimea, and the Sea of Azov.

Evening reports from Greenpeace warned that the incident could mark one of the worst environmental disasters in decades. Yet, over six months later, key questions remain unanswered: how much fuel oil was on board, how much has spilled, and how much continues to leak? Russia has released no official data, and the opacity surrounding the incident has alarmed environmental observers across the region.

Scientists fear the worst. In the absence of containment, oil residues may soon reach the coastlines of Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. The Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy in Varna, Bulgaria, has been monitoring the situation closely. While no immediate threat has been detected in Bulgarian waters, local experts are cautious. The pollution zone, they say, could expand rapidly with changing winds and currents.

The Ukrainian Scientific Centre for Marine Ecology has published several projections showing the slow eastward spread of the slick through the Black Sea. Ukrainian Greenpeace confirms that oil traces have already reached the Odessa region and are approaching Romanian maritime boundaries.

Meanwhile, Russia’s official response — or lack thereof — has drawn sharp criticism. Unlike the Norilsk diesel spill in 2020, when a federal emergency was declared and Norilsk Nickel was fined billions, the Black Sea disaster has triggered no significant federal action. It is worth noting, however, that in the Norilsk case, the company went on to carry out extensive remediation, including full-scale river cleanup and contaminated soil removal.

In contrast, in 2025, volunteers are still collecting fuel oil from Russian beaches by hand. The companies responsible continue to dispute their liability in court. No fines, no cleanup mandate, no transparency. Only silence.

The mandate that the DoT challenged was a key part of former US President Joe Biden’s plan to address climate change.

The United States Department of Transportation (DoT) has declared that former President Joe Biden’s administration exceeded its authority by assuming a high uptake of electric vehicles in calculating fuel economy rules.

With that declaration on Friday, the DoT paved the way for looser fuel standards and published the “Resetting the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Program” (CAFE) rule. A future separate rule from the administration of President Donald Trump will revise the fuel economy requirements.

“We are making vehicles more affordable and easier to manufacture in the United States. The previous administration illegally used CAFE standards as an electric vehicle mandate,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement.

The department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in writing its rule last year under Biden, had “assumed significant numbers of EVs would continue to be produced regardless of the standards set by the agency, in turn increasing the level of standards that could be considered maximum feasible,” it said Friday.

A shift away from Biden policies 

In January, Duffy signed an order directing NHTSA to rescind fuel economy standards issued under Biden for the 2022-2031 model years that had aimed to drastically reduce fuel use for cars and trucks.

In a release last year, the DoT, then led by Pete Buttigieg, put in place a required fuel economy to increase by 2 percent for cars made between 2027 and 2031.

At the time, the DoT said it would help save consumers upwards of $600 on gas every year. It was also part of the Biden administration’s plan to address climate change.

“These new fuel economy standards will save our nation billions of dollars, help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and make our air cleaner for everyone. Americans will enjoy the benefits of this rule for decades to come,” then NHTSA Deputy Administrator Sophie Shulman said at the time.

In June 2024, the NHTSA said it would hike CAFE requirements to about 50.4 miles per gallon (4.67 litres per 100km) by 2031 from 39.1mpg currently for light-duty vehicles.

The agency last year said the rule for passenger cars and trucks would reduce gasoline consumption by 64 billion gallons and cut emissions by 659 million metric tons, cutting fuel costs with net benefits estimated at $35.2bn.

Late on Thursday, Senate Republicans proposed eliminating fines for failures to meet CAFE rules as part of a wide-ranging tax bill, the latest move aimed at making it easier for automakers to build gas-powered vehicles.

Last year, Chrysler-parent Stellantis paid $190.7m in civil penalties for failing to meet US fuel economy requirements for 2019 and 2020 after paying nearly $400m for penalties from 2016 through 2019. GM previously paid $128.2m in penalties for 2016 and 2017.

Stellantis said it supported the Senate Republican proposal “to provide relief while DoT develops its proposal to reset the CAFE standards … The standards are out of sync with the current market reality, and immediate relief is necessary to preserve affordability and freedom of choice.”

GM declined to comment.

Reform UK has said it will fully reinstate winter fuel payments to pensioners and scrap the two-child benefit cap, if the party gets into government.

The commitments – to be unveiled at a press conference next week – come after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer faced pressure from Labour MPs to change his approach to both policies.

By the time of the next general election there may be no need to reverse either policy.

Sir Keir has already announced plans to ease cuts to winter fuel payments – without saying when or how.

And ministers say he has privately indicated he would like if possible to find a way to scrap the two-child benefit cap – although a formal decision may be many months away.

The intervention by Nigel Farage – first reported in the Sunday Telegraph – will highlight and magnify the increasingly awkward divisions over policy within Labour.

Reform UK said they would pay for their new polices by cutting net zero projects and scrapping hotels for asylum seekers.

A source told the paper it was “already outflanking Labour” on both issues.

Downing Street has been contacted for comment.

More than 10 million pensioners lost out on winter fuel payments, worth up to £300, when the pension top-up became restricted to only people receiving pension credit last year.

But Sir Keir has announced plans to ease the cuts in a U-turn following mounting political pressure in recent weeks.

The prime minster said the policy would be changed at the autumn Budget, adding ministers would only “make decisions we can afford”. He did not lay out exactly what this would entail.

The winter fuel payment is a lump sum of £200 a year for households with a pensioner under 80, or £300 for households with a pensioner over 80.

On the two-child benefit cap, the Observer reported Sir Keir had privately backed plans to scrap it.

The paper’s report that the PM was asking the Treasury to find ways to pay for it came alongside growing unrest and threats of rebellion among backbench Labour MPs.

The policy – which prevents most families from claiming means-tested benefits for any third or additional children born after April 2017 – was introduced in 2017 by the then-Conservative government and is estimated to affect 1.5 million families.

But the government’s child poverty strategy, which had been due for publication in the spring, has been delayed as it is still being worked on and measures including scrapping the cap are being considered.

Labour MPs have long been calling for it to be axed, with seven of them suspended from the parliamentary party for voting against the government on an amendment to do so.

Four were readmitted in February but the remainder continue to sit as independent MPs.

Pressure to remove the limit has remained on the government from senior Labour figures, including former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who said it was “condemning children to poverty”.